


A Peace That Was Torn from the Morning

by ishafel



Series: The Winter Prince [4]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-25
Updated: 2010-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:46:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes doing the right thing is as simple as doing the only thing you can do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

The banner's been torn and the wind's gotten colder/ perhaps we've grown a little cynical.

They sent Draco to Azkaban, on one of Dumbledore's unfathomable and possibly pointless errands. Snape, when Draco asked, only said that questioning the old man meant questioning the system, and that it was better not to think too much about either. And so he went, and sat by himself for several hours in someone else's office, in the administrative section of the building where his father had died. Even then, he might have behaved himself; it was not entirely unlikely. But the chair that they found for him was next to a filing cabinet that seemed very much to have a mind of its own.

One of the drawers refused to stay in place. Draco sat, propping his feet on the woman's desk, and watched as it opened and closed, opened and closed. It was crammed full of folders, and the label on the outside read simply, Deceased. It might have been full of files on deceased guards, or even deceased Dementors, but Draco knew that it wasn't. After the second time that they came in to tell him it would be a few more minutes, and thank him for his patience, Draco succumbed.

He waited, after the door closed, and caught the drawer and held it open. The files were organized alphabetically and he found and pried out Malfoy, Lucius. The cabinet protested sulkily, trying to catch his fingers, and then gave in ungracefully. He sat back down in his chair, clutching his prize, and wondered what he would say if he were caught. Though neither his name nor his father's old affiliation were secret, particularly among his former schoolmates, they had been for the most part forgiven. He had bought his acceptance into the Order with blood, and did not want to lose it.

There was no justifiable reason for setting a ward on the office door. He would have to go without, if he wanted to know what the file contained. Biting his lip, he opened the folder. The first page was a list of his father's crimes. Draco had been only fifteen when his father was arrested, and there had never been an indictment, much less a trial. This was the first time he had seen most of the accusations. There were more of them than he had ever imagined, most of them bureaucratic and obscure; these seemed to consist of bribery and embezzlement and usury and treason. His father had been nothing if not imaginative in both business and pleasure.

Both business and pleasure. Draco should not have been surprised. He knew what the Death Eaters were, and why they had to be stopped. He had never believed his father was innocent. But he could not reconcile the brutal charges with the man who had taught him to ride a broom. His father had done these things: Lucius Malfoy, who had taken him hunting when he was eight, and had not laughed when hounds killed and Draco cried. His father had used the Unforgivable Curses, not one time or a dozen, but times without number. His father had lectured him on respect for women, and never mentioned the rapes he'd committed.

Draco turned the page. His fingers did not tremble. He had been a spy, and now he was an officer; he had seen atrocities his father had not dreamed of. Lucius Malfoy had been a monster-a son could admit that, even if he could not stop himself from loving the man. But Lucius had been sane. Everything he had done had been done in cold blood, done for a purpose. His father was not Harry Potter.

He checked his watch. Five minutes passed, that felt like an eternity. The second page was a record of Lucius's admittance and a list of his possessions at the time. His wand, with which he had been buried; his watch, reclaimed for Draco by Snape; his wedding band, that Draco had kept for his mother. It was not very much, to remember a man by, but Draco had lost any desire to commemorate his father.

The next dozen pages were summaries of Lucius's interrogations, interspersed with notes on his father's health. Draco skimmed them, fascinated despite himself. Lucius had told wild, often contradictory lies in the beginning. Some of them were rather amusing. He had sworn that Voldemort's headquarters were in Alsace, Moscow, Taiwan, Muggle London; that he had been recruited to the Death Eaters as early as 1965 and as late as 1978. He had named names. Draco recognized five Death Eaters, three members of the Order, a cousin of his mother's, and the former Minister of Magic.

That had been in June, July, early August. By September Lucius had settled into a pattern of strict denial. At the end of October the interrogations became much more frequent, and there were notes about a secret the other captured Death Eaters insisted only Lucius knew. Something big, something that had changed the course of the first war. Whatever his secret had been, Lucius had kept it through November into December. In December he had fallen ill and they had decided to force the issue, though it was unclear from the notes what they had done.

The interrogation records ended abruptly on December 25. Draco could remember that Christmas. He'd spent it at Hogwarts, sulking because he was tired of being treated like a child. His mother had been abroad, raising money for Voldemort's cause; his friends had been at home, given one final reprieve before the war began.

The next page was a photograph, and mercifully still. The man lay on his back, his throat a bloody ruin, eyes staring emptily at the ceiling. That was the worst of it, that they had not even spared him that one small dignity, had not closed his eyes against the relentless glare of the florescent light. It took him a moment to recognize his father in that slack face with its cropped hair and body wrapped in rags. It had never occurred to him that his father had not died by magic, and now he wondered which Lucius would have preferred, which death was cleaner. Had his father been afraid? Had he fought?

Draco closed his eyes, the folder heavy in hands, and tried not to remember that he himself had begged for death, and told secrets he had not even been asked to reveal. How much worse had it been for his father? There was only one more page in the folder, and it was Lucius Malfoy's death certificate. Draco stared down at it, not really reading.

He had never cried for his father. Lucius Malfoy had died in a cell smaller than a horse's stall, on an island in the middle of the North Sea where the winds howled like murdered children. Draco had not cried for the man, and now he never would. But he was sorry his father was dead. He rubbed his eyes on his sleeve once, very quickly. It did not count as crying.

The death certificate contained all of the usual information. Age of death, forty-one; cause of death, murder (Snape, Severus-pardoned); date of death, 25 December 1995. Draco looked at it for a long time before he shoved it back into place. The drawer opened and closed itself with something very like satisfaction, and Draco, disregarding the fact that Azkaban was a non-smoking facility and that this was not his office, lit a cigarette.

He would have liked to pace: he was aware suddenly of the smallness of the room, of the lack of windows, of the sound of the sea. But movement made it worse. He had spent a month in a cage a quarter the size. He sat as still as he could, and did not think of Snape. It was not a particularly successful effort.

When the door opened he stood up much too quickly, and although his hands were empty something of his mood must have showed in his expression. The woman in the doorway took a step back, as if preparing for an attack. She held the envelope of Dumbledore's papers to her a chest, as if it would protect her. When Draco put out his hand for them she moved forward reluctantly, and he took them and left as quickly as he could. He was not quite having a full-blown panic attack, but he was grateful to come out of the dimness and feel the wind on his face.

He climbed into the boat and handed the ferryman a coin, and the wind blew up to fill the little ship's sails. He leaned on the rail, into the spray of salt water, and wondered what to do. For three years, since his father went to Azkaban, he had trusted only one man. It seemed so foolish now to have put his faith in a man he knew to be a traitor. Suddenly Snape was the enemy: his advice, his small kindnesses, called into question: the course of Draco's life charted by a captain who served his own end.

He was angry, and a little afraid, and very much disgusted with himself, and in the past it might have made him careless. But if he gained anything from his time as a spy he had gained discipline. He made his dozen Apparitions flawlessly, and ended outside Grimmauld Place unsplinched, Dumbledore's papers clenched forgotten in his hands. His teammates-minus Potter, who rarely fraternized-were sitting on the back step smoking. They called out to him as he passed, but he brushed by them without a word.

The big old house that was the Order's headquarters was blessedly quiet inside, despite the fact that nearly fifty people occupied it on a constant basis. Draco climbed from the first floor to the second and stood in the empty hallway, fighting for breath. "Do you think you are the only man in the world to have been raped?" Snape had asked him, and Draco had felt guilty to be so much trouble. He did not feel guilty any longer.

He dropped the papers in the appropriate basket on the desk in Dumbledore's office as he passed, and wrapped his fingers tighter around his wand, and steadied the sword at his hip. It would be embarrassing to be sick in the corridor, and far worse to do so in front of Snape. A part of him wanted nothing more than to pretend that nothing had happened. But he spent a great deal of time already, pretending not to know things that he did know. There were only so many lies a man could tell, even to himself.

The first door was Dumbledore's office. The second door was Charlie Weasley's. The third door was the infirmary. The fourth door was Snape's lab, and Draco squared his shoulders and opened it, and went in without knocking. Snape's back was to the door; he had no reason to be wary, here in his own place, among people he trusted. Draco stayed where he was, knowing that Snape, turning, would be half-blinded by the light from the door. He was not sure if he meant to fight or not, or even if it was a fight he could win.

He stood in the doorway, wordless, still, until Snape did turn. And, seeing the other man, he did want to fight. Those he trusted, those he loved, had betrayed him at every turn; he had been beaten and raped and starved and poisoned. The things he had done, he had not done because he was brave, or good: certainly he had not done them because he was wise. He had pledged his life to this man's cause, and learned it was for nothing. He could not kill Potter, and he dared not kill Dumbledore, but Snape might be within his power.

"Tell me again how my father died," he said, and Snape did not flinch.

"Voldemort killed him, when he learned you were a spy," he answered, and Draco could feel Snape's mind on the edges of his own. "We tried to protect him, Draco, I promise--. Whatever they told you, we tried to stop them."

"Did you? Did you do everything you could for him?" Draco demanded. His sword was in his hand, though he could not remember drawing it. "Did you make him beg before you killed him? Did you spit in his face? Did you promise him you'd keep his family safe?"

Snape reached for his wand and Draco knocked his hand aside with the flat of the blade. "Don't bother," he said. "I've seen you fight. I trained with you. I can beat you." Saying it, he knew it was true. All his life Snape had been bigger than he was, stronger, faster, better. But they stood eye to eye now, and if Snape was still a fraction heavier, Draco was years younger. And his reflexes were a heartbeat quicker, honed to perfection by his service in Dumbledore's Army, his months running missions at Potter's side.

Something flickered to life in Snape's eyes. It might have been rage, or only desperation. "What is it you think you know, Draco?" he asked, his voice like a knife. For a moment the pressure of Snape's mind against his went away, only to return redoubled. Draco was not Snape's equal as a Legilimens, but he did not need to be. He had nothing to hide, and he only needed to hold Snape off long enough to close. Snape was unarmed, his wand out of reach.

"I know that my father was a year dead when you came to me and asked me to spy," Draco answered. "I know that you know, because you killed him. The letters I wrote to him, that you had smuggled in--you must have found those amusing? Did you burn them or pass them around to the rest of the Order?"

Snape looked away. For a moment he was defenceless. Draco could have had him, with the blade in his hand or an Unforgivable Curse. But he wanted an answer as much as he wanted revenge. "'No one could have done more, Draco,' isn't that what you said to me? No one could have regretted the failure more."

"What do you want me to say, Mr. Malfoy?" Snape asked. He looked tired, but his defenses were back in place, and as strong as ever. "Do you want my head, or will an apology satisfy you? Do you want me to tell you that your father was dying anyway, or that I did my best to keep you out of it?"

"I wanted you to tell me it wasn't true," Draco said, and the words sounded strangely flat to his own ears. Had that been all he'd wanted? Plausable deniability?

"You should know by now that anything you can believe of us is probably true." The sneer on Snape's face was familiar. Draco had seen it directed at innumerable Gryffindors. It had never before been meant for him, and Draco found that the urge to wipe it away was a consuming one.

Snape was anticipating a magical attack; he was not prepared for Draco to drop his sword and wand and attempt to strangle him bare-handed. Draco's first lunge sent him reeling back into the lab bench, and a half a dozen beakers and vials crashed to the floor. Draco's right hand closed around his throat; if the fingers Potter had broken had healed straighter, it might have been enough to end Snape's life then and there.

But whatever Snape was, he was not a coward, and his time as a Death Eater and a double agent had taught him tricks Draco did not know existed. While Draco struggled to correct his grip, Snape surged upward, knocking his legs out from under him. Both men hit the floor rolling, and were instantly smeared with the remnants of Snape's potions ingredients and bloodied by shards of glass.

Draco, half on his side and half on top of Snape, was forced to relinquish his grip on the man's throat: his good hand tangled in Snape's thick, greasy hair, he narrowly avoided the loss of an eye: Snape's hand had closed on the jaggedly broken neck of a flask. Now he managed to slam Snape's head into the floor with considerable force. Snape did not quite go limp, but his eyes lost focus and his thrashing slowed.

Draco hit him twice, very hard, in the nose-which seemed to put an end to the other man's resistance-and let him go. His hand throbbed and his knuckles were already swelling; he would be lucky to be able to close his fist in a few hours time. He had been so angry with Snape to begin with, but now he felt sick and miserable. He had never been very good at violence. He would not have made much of a Death Eater. He turned his back on Snape and scooped up his wand and sword, leaving the other man there on the floor.


	2. II

love and fear in a house/ knowledge of the oppressor

The distance-and the stairs--to his room seemed insurmountable, and Draco considered going down instead of up. He could sit in the garden with Ginny and Dean, and share whatever they were smoking, and pretend the afternoon had never happened. He was not sure which option was preferable. He began to go up, walking very slowly. His sheathed sword banged against his hip with every step, and his head ached. The first week after his capture he had found the narrow dark hallways and steep staircases of the Order's headquarters obscurely frightening. It had been Snape who had reassured him then, casting illumination charms that made the small space brighter than daylight.

He had not cried for his father; he would not cry because Snape had betrayed him. He heard footsteps coming up behind him and moved out of the way. He did not look up, because it was as close as he could come to invisibility without a spell. The man behind him checked, halted at Draco's side, and wrapped fingers around Draco's elbow.

"Malfoy?" Harry Potter asked. "Is something wrong?"

Draco bit back a snort and turned. "No," he said. "Nothing. I'm just tired, P-Harry. Time for my nap." He knew instantly it was a mistake.

"Nap?" Potter seemed to believe it was some kind of code. "I was thinking about taking a nap, too." His green eyes gleamed in the shadows of the stairwell. Draco swallowed, feeling like a cornered animal.

It came to him then that he did not have to be where he was. This was what Snape had wanted, yes, but he had been offered a choice and he had chosen to do it. He could have defected; the Malfoy name and the Malfoy fortune were very much at his disposal. He could have tried to join his father's side: Voldemort might have had him killed, but he might have welcomed him. He could have cut and run, or begged them to Obliviate him over and over, until he had forgotten the fact of Potter's existence. He was where he was because he had wanted to be there, and nothing could change that.

And so, "It's a nap you're after?" he asked, and smiled up at Potter as flirtatiously as he could. "So we'll go to our own rooms like good little boys?" Potter's fingers tightened around his arm, and for a moment he thought he'd misjudged the thing. But before he could do more than tense, Potter leaned in and kissed him with a mouth hard and hot as a branding iron.

Draco had no alternative but to close his eyes and kiss him back. Potter had been gentle with him, during the two weeks that their relationship that wasn't had developed. Potter had been patient, and Snape had provided Draco with appropriate aphrodisiacs when possible; it looked like both reprieves had come to an end. He leaned against the wall while Potter kissed him frantically and roughly, and tried his best to act enthusiastic.

It appeared to be enough. Potter slid his hands inside Draco's shirt and ground against his thigh and grunted and whimpered and came. Afterward he sagged, panting, against Draco's shoulder. Draco, torn between disgust and amusement, waited patiently and hoped Potter would not insist on reciprocation. There were more footsteps, this time from below, and Charlie Weasley's red head emerged from the gloom.

He was a Weasley; they were not over gifted with discretion or subtlety. His eyes, incredulous and angry, met Draco's over Potter's head. His face changed to match his hair and he turned away and began climbing again, much more quickly. Draco watched him go, wondering if he was as decent a man as he pretended to be. Most of his childhood heroes had proved to be anything but.

When Weasley was out of sight Draco gently shook Potter away. "Come on," he said, and his voice did not betray him. "Let's find somewhere more comfortable." Potter's room was closer; when they were inside he threw himself on the bed and rolled so that he could watch Draco undress.

Draco was tempted to use a spell to undo the rows of buttons on his uniform tunic-his hand was swollen and stiff, and he had a cut on one knuckle that must have been from Snape's teeth. But casual magic made Potter uncomfortable, and Draco wanted him in as pleasant a mood as possible. He had barely begun when Potter's eyes narrowed and he sat up. "What have you done to your hand?" he demanded.

Draco straightened the fingers and flexed them for him. "It wasn't anything," he answered. "I lost my temper." He was telling the truth, of course, but it was enough of an understatement that he almost smiled. Potter was not the joking type, but Snape would have enjoyed it. With the thought, of course, he lost any desire to smile. Potter got up and examined the little gash.

"This ought to be washed," he said critically. "I think there's some stuff in the bathroom." He did not ask why Draco's fingers were so crooked; Draco hoped it was because he felt guilty. The bathroom for the floor was just down the hall; Draco had used it before and was perfectly capable of cleaning his wound himself, but he trailed after Potter because it was easier than arguing.

When they were both inside, with the door closed-and what Charlie Weasley would have thought of that, Draco did not like to imagine-he sat on the edge of the marble bath and watched Potter rummage through the medicine cabinet. He was very tired, more from emotion than from exertion, and it was not unpleasant to be fussed over. There seemed to be a number of brown glass bottles, labeled in peeling paper, and still more white plastic bottles with caps even an unlocking charm could not open.

He held his hand under the warm water as he was told, and allowed Potter to pour a reddish brown liquid on it, and bandage it with something sticky. A healing spell would have been faster and more effective, but leaving the thing alone would have been adequate, too. Because he did not really trust Potter, he turned down the offer of pills as politely as he could. Potter frowned at him, but let it go unchallenged.

They went back to Potter's room, and this time Potter undid Draco's buttons a little too eagerly, so that half of them were lost in the process. Draco did not help much, but he did not try to slow things down either. It was easiest to pretend nothing was happening. Potter's strong, calloused fingers were a little too rough, his breathing a little too loud. They traced circles on Draco's skin and he held himself perfectly still, but he wanted nothing more than to twist away.

The fingers were replaced with lips. It should have been better-they had never done this to him, no one had ever done this to him-but Draco could feel his throat closing. It seemed, suddenly, that the room was smaller and darker than he remembered it. He closed his eyes and his heartbeat sounded in his ears, strong and steady as a drumbeat. This would not kill him. He was stronger than anyone imagined.

Potter's mouth closed on his flaccid penis. Draco stopped breathing all together for a moment. The door is not locked, he told himself, it is not locked and I have my wand within easy reach. He managed to swallow the lump in his throat and suck in air. Potter seemed to be losing patience, but Draco could not will himself hard. He stayed where he was, still and quiet, torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to scream. He had not had an orgasm in six months-had not even had an erection without chemical assistance.

After another tense, futile moment, Potter got up. He washed from the basin and dressed without a word and went out, slamming the door behind him. Draco got up and put his trousers on, and rolled himself in Potter's duvet, and fell asleep immediately. He dreamed of his father and Snape, in the robes and masks of Death Eaters, holding down a girl who begged for mercy. He had to rape her, they told him, to prove himself to Voldemort. Her skin was like ice against the burning of the Mark on his arm, and he could summon no desire.

When he woke it was dark and Potter was sitting on the bed beside him. "My father," he began, before he'd thought.

Potter's mouth twisted. "Your father was a murderer," he hissed. "Your father watched while Voldemort killed my parents. Your father as good as killed my godfather."

Something in Draco broke. He had been so angry with Snape, earlier, and a part of him was still angry. "Your father captured my aunt Bellatrix in the first war, did you know that? She was pregnant, and your father and Sirius Black beat her until she lost the baby. They would have killed her, if she hadn't managed to escape." He said it because he knew how much it would hurt. Potter had done worse things, and seen worse done, but he persisted in believing that his father had been a candidate for sainthood. He waited, bracing himself, for the blow he knew he deserved, but it never came.

Potter turned away, fumbling in his pocket, and came up with a plastic bag with a few pills in it. "Take these and shut up," he said. He shook the pills into Draco's hand. They were small and white, stamped with a heart.

"What are they?" Draco demanded. Potter had given him Muggle drugs before, with varying results. They had held his nose to make him swallow, though by the end he would have taken them willingly, given the choice.

"They're to help with-you know," Potter answered. Draco looked at him, and at the pills. He had been told to keep Potter happy. Even if it made him sick, it was still better than the earlier attempt at sex. He swallowed the pills dry.

At first he did not think they had any effect at all. He lay, frozen, while Potter stripped off; he let the other man draw the covers back; he even undid the laces of his own trousers. The fingers of his good hand felt strangely swollen, and his mouth tasted of ashes, and he felt cold and hot at the same time. Potter's hands were between his legs, but he did not really mind, even when Potter dripped something thick and cool and liquid on him.

And then, all at once, the tension went out of him, and muscles he had not even known he had relaxed. "This stuff is wonderful, he tried to say, and was surprised when the words came out slurred. After that he shut his eyes, and let himself go. Something was happening to him, a feeling he had almost forgotten. Potter pushed himself inside, and it was not painful, or ugly, or even unwelcome; Draco's body simply opened around him as if it had been spelled. Perhaps it had.

There was a great deal of thrusting, and some moaning. Things slipped away from Draco, and he let them go. His climax, when it came, hit him like the tide going out, and washed his mind away. There was more after that, he was fairly certain, but the next time he was sure of when and where he was, it was morning. The room was full of mellow sunlight, so bright that it hurt Draco's eyes.

When he got up his legs barely held him; he felt shaky and slightly stoned. He was fairly sure that he was going to be late for Snape, and that there was something he should be remembering, something to do with Snape and his father. Potter was still asleep, breathing heavily, and so he dressed as quickly as he could in yesterday's clothing and went down to the lab without even stopping to splash water on his face.

The doorknob was turning in his hand when it hit him, and by then the door was open and he was face to face with Snape. The other man looked as ill as Draco felt. Both of his eyes were black, and his nose was very swollen indeed. "Mr. Malfoy," he said, and Draco knew he had finally done something Snape hadn't expected. "Can I help you with something?"

He was never sure what made him say it, but, "I'm here to work," he answered. "Am I late?"

Snape made a show of looking at his watch, no doubt to hide whatever emotion it was that flickered in his eyes. "Hardly at all." He stepped back to let Draco into the room. The glassware and ingredients had been cleared up, but the lab smelled faintly of potions gone wrong. Draco moved over to the lab bench and stood, waiting for instructions. His head felt as if it were filled with cotton. He had been so determined, the night before, to be done with Snape.

Now he wondered how he could have been so upset. What had Snape done to him? Only lie to him. There were worse things.

There was-"Draco?" Snape looked half-puzzled, half annoyed. "Are you deaf now?" he demanded.

Draco blinked at him. "What did you say?" he asked, involuntarily taking a step back. The apothecary's cabinet Snape used to store his less lethal ingredients was behind him; he leaned gratefully and ignored the protruding knobs. Snape closed in on him like a striking snake, and Draco tried frantically to shield his mind and draw his wand at the same time, and failed at both.

"Are you drunk?" Snape hissed. "Didn't you have the nerve to face me without something to stiffen your spine?" There was something in his face that Draco almost thought was hurt. And before he could reply, Snape's wand was out, and a brilliant white light blinded him. Draco did not really think Snape meant to kill him, but if he had been in better shape he would have fought purely on reflex. As it was, he barely had time to react before Snape was drawing back.

"You don't smell like alcohol," Snape said slowly. "But your pupils are as big as dinner plates." He was not really asking, of course. He knew. Draco could tell that he knew. "What is it?" he asked, the anger in his voice replaced by weariness. "What did he give you?"

Draco looked away. "I don't know--," he faltered. "It wasn't like that. I took it willingly, I wanted to."

"You little idiot." Snape reached for his wrist, felt with sure fingers for his pulse. "What were you thinking?"

Draco said, dully, "I wasn't thinking. Or I was thinking that once in a while, it would be nice not to have to think. I'm a tool, isn't that right? I should just let myself be used. Isn't that what a tool does-lie quiet in the hand of a master?"

"Is that really what you think?" Snape's voice was dispassionate, but his hands were gentle as he felt Draco's forehead. "It doesn't look like you've done yourself any real damage, but I'll need a blood sample to be sure."

Draco submitted quietly to the lancet, and this time he did think. Had it been the truth, what he'd said to Snape? He was a tool, true; but Potter was not his master. And he was only useful as long as he let himself be used, and that-that decision-was not a luxury a wand had, or a sword. "No," he decided. "It isn't what I think. What I'm doing-it's important, isn't it? Because of the prophecy?"

Snape was spinning the blood in the centrifuge, and did not turn. But, "it's important," he said. "Not because of the prophecy, or not exactly. But we know what it is we are asking of you, Draco, and we would not ask it if we did not think it had value. You have to decide whether or not you trust me. I can't blame you if you don't."

It hurt to think-but thinking of this would hurt no matter what. Snape had his reasons; Draco had to believe that. Otherwise it had all been for nothing. "I have to trust someone, though, don't I?" he asked. "And I'm choosing to trust you." Snape did turn then. "Do me a favor, and don't screw it up this time," Draco finished.


	3. III

An eye for an eye/ And a tooth for a tooth/ And anyway I told the truth.

In theory, Harry Potter's little team of soldiers was the best fighting unit Dumbledore's Army had. In practice, they rarely saw actual combat. Perhaps they were being saved for the right occasion, but Draco did not think so. They did not trust Potter; surely Ginny and Thomas and Draco himself did not come high on their list either.

They would be reluctant to send a team so badly matched and so likely to mutiny into the field. Draco and his teammates were strong, experienced, and consistently at one another's throats. Only an idiot would send them out on a mission requiring delicacy or diplomacy. That was why Draco was surprised when they were sent out.

He knew that something was up-they all did. Tempers at headquarters had been uncertain for some time; the war was going badly. Suddenly it seemed everyone was waiting for something to happen, trembling on the edge of something. But the raid his team had been assigned, while risky, was hardly likely to be pivotal. It was meant to disguise something bigger.

Draco took Ginny out for coffee, hoping to chat her up on the subject. She was the member of the team he knew least, and unsurprisingly the one he got on with best. But she had no more idea what was going on then Draco did. Instead, she complained about Potter and he listened. It was an odd, uncomfortable position to be in. Snape might be able to remember who knew what, but Draco's training as a spy had been perfunctory at best and he had difficulty keeping things straight.

Ginny had creamy white skin, and the strap of her bra peeked from beneath her uniform tunic. Draco felt the first faint stirring of lust. Ginny was forbidden fruit, but it would be easy enough to have her. She was lonely, and she would be warm and soft beneath him. She could not possibly be a good enough fuck to be worth the risk. He forced his eyes back to her face. She was not crying, not quite, but she was close. "Time to go," he said. "We'll be late for Potter's briefing." He dug for his wallet while she regrouped, desperately hoping he'd headed off the tears in time.

He set the pace for the walk back to headquarters, and felt guilty when she had to break into a trot to keep up. She wasn't so bad, Ginny, even if she did have questionable taste in boyfriends and ginger hair. He slowed, matching his pace to hers. It was a mistake; she took it as an invitation.

"About Harry," she said. And he stopped where he was, in the middle of a sidewalk in Muggle London, with only half an hour before the meetup to plan the biggest raid of their careers. "About Harry--."

It came down to whether she knew or not, about him and Potter. He'd believed at first that all of them knew, not only the Order members, but also the soldiers of Dumbledore's Army, their families, friends, familiars; half the Death Eaters, even. He'd believed they were all laughing at him behind his back, that every time someone turned away from him it was because they were picturing him on his knees before an endless stream of junior officers.

It wasn't true. Potter and Thomas and Charlie Weasley knew, and Snape knew, and Dumbledore seemed to know whatever Snape did. Finnegan knew, and Finch-Fletchley, but they were gone. The others most likely only had bits and pieces at best. Whatever Ginny knew, it was only what Potter had seen fit to tell her; lots of interrogation, probably, and very little torture.

"About Harry?" he asked. "What about him?" There was no reason to make it easy for her.

Ginny looked away. "You're something to him that I can't be," she said at last. "And I don't understand what it is, or why. But he needs everything we can give him. He needs to stay--."

Her voice broke. She was crying after all. But Draco knew what she had been going to say. To stay sane. Because of the prophecy, because there was something Potter was meant to do: even if he could do it mad, there would be no way to control him. And he was important for himself, too. A symbol, his father had said to him, a long time ago when Draco was too young to understand or even care. Like a flag, or a figurehead on a ship: hope that something better might someday come to pass. He had been so in awe of his father then, so desperate for a Mark of his own.

"I do what I can for him," he answered. "What I can give him, I will." She didn't look up at him, but he thought she nodded. "Come on. We're going to be late as it is." He pretended he didn't hear her sniffling, or see her wiping her nose on her sleeve.  
His parents had been Death Eaters, but he had been brought up better than that.

"Ginny?" Potter demanded. "Have you been crying? Did Draco make you cry?"

Ginny muttered something under her breath. It did not sound polite. The world trembled, and Draco held himself as still as possible. It would take so little to set Potter off. A smirk would do it; the smile Thomas was hiding behind Potter's back would do it.

"I'm not crying," Ginny snapped, when he repeated the question. "I'm allergic to Malfoy's cologne." Draco didn't wear cologne, and Potter had watched him dress that morning and should have known. Still, it was a gift, and he took it.

"Sorry," he said as amiably as he could. Thomas rolled his eyes and Ginny's face reddened a bit, but Potter's eyes never faltered. It was an effort not to look down or away, in the face of both power and madness, but at least Potter was not the sort of monster who wore his monstrosity on the outside.

Somewhere in the house, a door closed, and Potter finally blinked. "Right," he said, suddenly all business. "If you two want to sit at opposite ends of the table." There was a general scramble for chairs and then Potter passed them down the folders containing the mission parameters. Draco had been rather disappointed, the first time he was sent out, to discover they were written with ordinary quills on ordinary parchment; he had credited Dumbledore with more imagination. But the files did not self-destruct, or respond only to human blood, and Potter did not even eat the parchments when they finished.

"This is what we're after," Potter was saying, tracing with one finger the sketch of a small goblet. "No telling why it's so important, except it's hidden in the place Voldemort lived as a child."

It's busywork, Draco thought, it isn't important at all. They want us out of the way while they do something big, and they want the Death Eaters distracted, too. "It looks old, don't you think?" he asked, doing his part. "It probably has been used for something nasty."

Potter looked pleased at the thought, because he was a Gryffindor and entirely lacking in common sense. "Right. Well, here's the plan--."

It was a step up from, we go in, we get the cup, and then we get out. Not much of a step up, though. Thomas and Draco made tactful suggestions while Ginny, being a woman of action, stared out the window. Draco suspected that the heist itself wasn't the issue. Muggle security was an oxymoron at best; a child with a wand could get by. Given the nature of the mark, a child might have the advantage. All of their missions seemed to be similarly pointless, focused on gathering corpse flowers by the light of falling stars, or roc feathers, or a spectacularly ugly locket from a particularly bad tempered pawnbroker in Seville.

This time, though, the air of anticipation made Draco sure that more was expected than kappas or rogue werewolves or difficult bargains. They were expecting Death Eaters, and not just any Death Eaters. Draco had met a few of Voldemort's inner circle during his time as a spy, and he did not look forward to facing them. But he did his best to look brave and forthright as the briefing drew to a close. He had had a great deal of practice pretending to be a good soldier, so much that it almost came naturally. His father would have been revolted.

When the others were gone, Potter caught Draco's arm. "What were you and Ginny talking about before you came in?" he demanded.

"Oh." Draco fished for an answer, came up empty-handed: "Mostly you."

Idiot that he was, Potter looked pleased and not frightened. He kissed Draco softly on the mouth, the way a lover would, the way a man would someone he loved. And that was something Draco did not really like to think about; that Potter could be both a lover and a killer with no space between--because it came uncomfortably close to his doubts about his father. Instead he let the kiss deepen and did not turn when the door behind him opened and shut.

Later, as they were putting the finishing touches on the poison they had developed, Snape asked him what Draco suspected he fancied were fatherly questions. It would have been endearing if it had not been so embarrassing. He knew what it was Snape was afraid of: that Potter had done something to him to make him forget, or worse, to keep it from mattering. He was afraid Draco had been just a little too sincere--that he was somehow falling for Potter.

The thought was both horrifying and offensive. It was also difficult to defend himself against, because it was true, at least in part. He had not forgotten what Potter had done to him, and he had not forgiven it, but it had become simply one more betrayal. And so, because he was angry with Snape, still, though he had not meant to show it, he found himself asking, "Did you never get past what they did to you?"

Snape looked as startled as if one of his potions had exploded in his face. "I don't--," he began, and his voice cracked. His hands stopped, for a second, less than a second, before they resumed their stirring. "I don't recall having told you anything that would have given you that impression."

It was both unfair and cruel, but Draco could not bring himself to drop it. Why should he be the only one whose life was an open book? "You've stirred that far too long, you know," he said casually. "Don't you remember what you said to me, after it happened?"

Snape tipped the cauldron over the drain. "I remember," he answered. "I don't owe you an explanation, but I'll give you one. But not here. I'll buy you a drink, so long as we don't have to have it at the Three-Legged Griffin."

"Unlucky Griffin," Draco corrected, and very nearly smiled. "We'd better not go there; it's a little too popular with this lot."

When they had found an acceptable bar, and Snape had downed his first drink as though he expected it to be his last, Draco judged that it was safe to reopen the subject. He did not want to have to explain exactly why it was so important to him to know. "What--" he started.

"It was a long time ago," Snape said. "I was young--younger than you, even--I was at school still." He lit a cigarette, and an ashtray from a nearby table leaped into place. "I was in a place I should not have been, and I was careless with it. And afterward, those I went to expecting help and sympathy were not overly kind. Attitudes were different, then. If I had been a girl--or a pureblood--it might have gone quite differently. But as it was, I was told to keep my mouth shut, if I didn't want people to think I'd been begging for it.

"But that isn't what you want to hear, is it? You want to hear what happened next." The second round materialized and he took a large sip. Draco, who had to fight the next day and was going to be in trouble as it was, did not. "It was like having a curse scar here," he said, touching Draco gently between the eyes. "And maybe if you're born with such a scar, you never see it. But if you acquire one later, it becomes all you see. Every time you look in the mirror, and every time someone else looks you in the face. It defines you, and so you learn not to look in mirrors, and you learn not to look at people's faces, and it rules your life."

Draco reached out, as gently as he could, and touched Snape's mind with his own. It was as cool and still as ever it had been. Whoever had taught Snape Occlumency, he was gifted indeed: his control was absolute, even with the drink and the story he was telling. It did not fit with the man Draco remembered, who had let an eleven-year old boy provoke him to the edge of reason on numerous occasions.

"But if you can keep from looking long enough," Snape continued as if he were unaware of Draco's efforts, "than you start to forget. And by the time you can bring yourself to look again, the scar has begun to fade. Or perhaps you were never such a monster as you imagined."

"And that was how it happened for you?" Draco asked. He did not think it was.

Snape smiled at him the way he had done on the rare occasions when Draco came first in Potions, and for a moment Draco felt thirteen again. "No," he said. "I've never been patient enough, or sensible enough, to let things happen in their own time. I went looking for power, and I ended with a scar to end all scars."

Draco tried very hard not to look at his arm, and failed. So much for Slytherin subtlety. "Thank you for telling me," he said. "Did you ever find out who…?"

"I recognized them, yes. I could tell you the names, but they would mean nothing to you; most of them died before you were born. Tell me, Draco, what exactly is this in aid of?"

Snape would have it from him, one way or another. And now, when it no longer mattered, Draco was embarrassed. "My father," he answered.

Confusion flickered on Snape's face. "Lucius?" he asked. Draco let him see what he meant; it would have felt too much like betrayal to say it. Snape smiled again, but this time there was no amusement in it. "Fucking Dumbledore," he said. "He never could leave well enough alone. It wasn't your father. You have to realize, taking the Mark-it wiped away everything you were before, everything you loved, everything you believed.

"It made you do things you had never imagined being capable of doing, because suddenly the word no was not in your vocabulary. And the closer you stood to Voldemort--and your father was very close indeed--the more compelling it was. Consider yourself lucky he never marked you; it is as bad as rape in its way."

Draco nodded, although he wasn't sure he understood. "How long did it take you before-before you could--?"

Snape shook his head. "Do you children think of nothing else but sex?" Seeing Draco's face, he relented. "Not so long, Draco. By the time I found someone willing, I was more than ready. But it was a long time before I fell asleep with someone else close by, and longer still before I did so without my wand in easy reach."

"I won't ever like it," Draco said, the words slipping out. "Not with Potter--and what if I don't--with anyone?"

"You will," Snape answered. His mind brushed Draco's, half question and half reassurance, and then he leaned over the table and kissed Draco full on the mouth. For a moment Draco sat still, frozen by shock, by the taste of single-malt Scotch and Turkish tobacco. Without meaning to, he opened his mouth. His body responded of its own accord, slanting towards Snape's. He put out a hand to steady himself and was surprised when it landed on Snape's shoulder. His pulse sounded in his ears like thunder, and he knew it was arousal and not fear that was making his heart race. When Snape broke the kiss and drew back, he was as disappointed as he was confused.

"I've kept you out past your bedtime," Snape said to him, as if he were a child, as if it had never happened. "Be careful tomorrow night: there's a good bit at stake." He stood up to go, and Draco followed him, feeling like a man in a dream. They Apparated back to headquarters together, and Draco crawled into bed beside Potter half-dressed and went to sleep clutching his wand.


	4. IV

Hungry as an archway/ through which the troops have passed

The plan started to fall apart almost as soon as they arrived at the orphanage the next night. To begin with, it was raining so heavily that visibility was nearly nonexistent. One of them had to stand guard in the front, and one in the back by the entrance. Potter had originally assigned Thomas the front and Draco the back, but changed his mind when they were unable to unlock the door.

Instead he left Ginny in the street and Thomas waiting in the alley while he and Draco tried a dozen different spells on the door. In the end they were forced to break it down, which proved to be easier said than done. It also meant Draco was stuck following Potter into the building, rather than waiting in relative-if damp-safety, outside. They stepped over the shattered door and into the dimly lit place that had been Lord Voldemort's first home.

Draco's experience with Muggle social work was nonexistent, but he thought that the pleasant, airy building more resembled headquarters than the prison he had expected. He and Potter followed the tracking device up twisting staircases and down wide hallways, trying very hard to be stealthy. They were not particularly successful. Draco, at least, imagined Death Eaters in every shadow, and once as they came around a corner he had to bite his tongue to keep himself from squeaking. But it was true that some rats were only that, and not traitors in disguise.

The tracking spell led them to a room occupied by a tiny girl. Draco charmed her into a deeper sleep and joined Potter in trying to pry up the floorboard. If something were going to go wrong-and Draco had no natural gift for prophecy, but he had an uneasy presentiment that something was going to-this would be the time. There were so many holes in the plan, and he was not sure how many of them were the result of the Order's shoddy planning and how many caused by its insistence on confidentiality. How had they known where to find the cup? Why had Voldemort chosen such a ridiculous place to leave it?

The board slid free without a sound. Potter lifted it almost reverently, and laid it carefully aside. In the opening, the cup they had been sent to find lay, still wrapped in ragged fragments of cloth. Neither Draco nor Potter could look away from it, although at first glance there was very little to see. Just a chalice, not too big, made of some base metal, and radiating power. Draco had never wanted to touch anything so badly in his life. That was how he knew there was something wrong with it.  
His wand was in his hand, and he had no memory of drawing it. Potter's fingers were inches away from the cup. "Wait," he said desperately. "What if it's trap? It could be a Portkey--."

"It isn't a Portkey, Malfoy," Potter said, "and it isn't a trap. There's something about it, isn't there?" He had drawn his wand, too.

There were words caught in Draco's throat, and for a moment he thought he had spoken them without meaning to, spoken the spell: "Avada Kedavra." He had been meaning to use it on Potter since he'd learned what Potter had done to him. But he had not been the one casting the Killing Curse.

It struck the cup in a flash of green light. At once the sense of power was gone. The cup was only a cup. Outside, in the street, a woman screamed: Ginny. Draco and Potter exchanged a glance of pure horror, and then they were on their feet and running for the door. It was only as they pounded down the first flight of stairs that Draco realized they'd forgotten the cup altogether. He suspected that it no longer mattered.

One wrong turn and thirty seconds later they burst out of the house and into the alley. Potter, slightly in the lead, stumbled hard and went down. When he got up he was covered in blood. That was how they knew Thomas was dead. And then they were in the middle of the battle in the street, and it was too late for Draco to stop and throw up; he had to fight for his life.

At first glance there were dozens of them, all in full regalia. Two of them had Ginny by the arms and were tearing her apart, while the others looked on. It would have been easy to run, and Draco was dismayed to find himself fighting instead. He threw the first hex he could think of, a slicing one better suited to bread, and it hit one of the Death Eaters and raised a spray of blood.

Potter was casting dark and difficult spells without a pause for breath, seemingly even without a wand. It was all Draco could do to keep from stopping where he was to watch. He felt the old mix of awe and envy that had once made him furious whenever Potter's name was mentioned. He was good: of course he was, he was a Malfoy. But he would never be as good as Potter was, and he was not even sure he wanted to be.

The Death Eaters-and now it seemed there were only ten and not three dozen-fell back before Potter's fury. They dropped what remained of Ginny. One of them bolted, and Draco cut him down with a quick Stupefy. Potter cast Cruciatus and the Killing Curse at the others impartially, and with a quickness Draco was not sure even Voldemort could have equaled. There had been ten, nine, six, and then there were three. They seemed to have realized there would be no quarter given. They fought with the ferocity of trapped animals, which still could not equal Potter's ferocity.

They ignored Draco altogether, which was understandable but unwise. He hit one of them from behind with Imperio, the only one of the Unforgivables he'd ever managed, and set the man on his comrades. For one crucial second their focus was lost, and Potter cast a wordless, wandless, possibly unintentional spell that set them all on fire. They began to scream almost immediately. Draco took a step back, and then another. They continued to burn despite the driving rain, and the smell of burning meat was unmistakable.

"Potter," he said, but the other man didn't turn. "Potter, stop it!" Behind him there was a crack as someone Apparated into the street. He turned so fast that he slipped and almost fell, his wand still clenched in his fist. The battle had begun and ended so quickly he'd never drawn his sword. There was a second crack. Potter moved quickly to stand beside him. For a moment they could not see the new arrivals. Draco thought nervously of his conviction that Potter was faster than the Dark Lord, and hoped it would not be tested. He wondered if it was too late to run for it. Potter put out his hand and touched his wrist, and Draco stepped away.

And then the shapes moving toward them resolved into familiar figures: Snape, and behind him Charlie Weasley. Both of them looked rather the worse for wear, but there was an expression on Snape's face that Draco had never seen before. He suspected it might be a grin, or as close as Snape could come to a grin.

Weasley looked tired, and a little stricken; no doubt he was realizing that if his sister wasn't standing she was probably dead. The manner of her death, spectacularly unpleasant as it had been, was unlikely to improve things for him. Draco fought for something to say, and came up empty. Potter, whose job it should have been, seemed dazed, exhausted by the power he'd expended.

"I'm sorry, Weasley," Draco finally managed, and the other man drifted to a halt. "We-she-we were too late to stop them, but it was quick, at least. She was dead before they ever got hold of her." Even to his own ears the words sounded ridiculous. Fortunately, Snape rescued him, cutting him off mid-explanation.

"Are those--?" He looked half intrigued and half sickened. "Are those Death Eaters still alive, Mr. Potter?" Potter turned slowly to look. Draco did not. He did not even want to think about it.

Snape clapped him on the shoulder as he and Weasley went by. Draco put his wand in his pocket and sat down on the curb, there in the rain, in the street. He could not stop himself from shivering, although he no longer felt sick. Someone, either one of the Death Eaters or Weasley or Snape, had done something to keep the Muggles snug and quiet in their unlit houses. Draco wondered what they would think in the morning, when they opened their doors to find their road awash with blood and strewn with body parts. A motor wreck, probably: Muggles were blind when they wanted to be.

Snape seemed to be taking charge; Draco could hear him Petrifying the remaining Death Eaters. He sounded pleased. After a few minutes a team of Aurors Apparated in and began taking the prisoners away. Draco flipped the collar of his cloak up to cover as much of the back of his neck as possible and stayed where he was. The cleanup was unlikely to be pleasant, and anyway he was sure Snape and Weasley had it well in hand.

He had more or less gone to sleep where he was when someone said his name, and he started so hard his chin slipped off his hand. "Time to go," Snape said, and this time he did grin. Draco stared up at him, wondering what had happened. If it had made Snape so happy, could it possibly be a good thing? "Were you planning to sit here all night?" Snape asked him.

Draco shook his head. "Did we win?" he asked, squinting up at Snape through the rain, and the soft glow of the streetlights.

Snape put out his hand. "We did win," he said, and there was, unmistakably, pleasure in his expression, as well as sadness. "Though the cost of it was terrible." Draco took the hand, and let Snape pull him to his feet. "You're not hurt, I take it," Snape continued. "Potter had a cracked rib or two, but you seem more or less unscathed. You'll have to tell me how the pair of you managed it."

"I don't know," Draco told him honestly. Now that he was on his feet he felt both better and worse: he was still cold and wet and miserable, and now sore, too, and he also felt a faint, disbelieving relief. "Did you say we won? Won won?"

"Have I ever been less than precise?" Snape looked entirely serious. "It's over, Draco. Apparate. We can go directly to headquarters." He was gone, that quickly, and Draco followed him, wondering if Snape meant they had won the war. It hardly seemed possible. But he had been told never to Apparate within a six-block radius of Grimmauld Place. If that restriction had been relaxed--.

Despite the lateness of the hour, lights burned in almost every window of the big old house. The black crepe was back on the door, and Draco wondered who else had died. He doubted Snape would count Dean Thomas and Ginny Weasley a terrible loss. But although Draco had not been especially fond of either of them, he found that he was sorry that they were dead. He had spent a great deal of time lately sitting on the back steps and smoking with them, on lazy summer afternoons. And it had very nearly been him, and not Ginny, left to guard the street.

Snape was waiting for him in the empty kitchen, the kettle already boiling. Draco dropped his sopping cloak on the floor and shook himself like a dog, and accepted a cup of chocolate as he sat down at the table. "Please," he said, "explain to me exactly what the hell happened tonight. I have never been so confused in my life."

"Fair enough." Snape took a sip of his chocolate and scowled. "It's difficult to know where to begin," he admitted. "Secrecy grows to be a habit. The cup your team destroyed was the last repository for Voldemort's power. We miscalculated, sending you to collect it; it seems that it was a trap. What made you decide to--."

"At the beginning," Draco interrupted him. "For both our sakes."

Snape sighed. "There is no need to be rude about it. We-that is, Albus and I-had known for some time that Voldemort had managed to divide his-essence, for lack of a better word--into seven portions, and store them in a number of objects powerful in their own right. It is what enabled him to survive so long in the first place. For the last three years, Albus and I have focused on retrieving and destroying those reliquaries. You and Potter, in fact, brought us several of them."

"The locket," Draco guessed. "Thomas insisted it had a picture of one of your relations in it."

"Wretched boy. No, she was not one of my relations. She was one of Voldemort's. Tonight we destroyed the final objects: the cup, and Voldemort's mortal body." He shook his head. "It was an amazing piece of magic, of course; I wish I could get hold of the books he read."

Draco thought, privately, that this was going rather too far. It was one thing to desire power, and quite another to drool over one of the Dark Lord's nastier spells. He did not say so. Snape was entitled to his fantasies, even the ones that were likely to gain him a cell in Azkaban. "You should have told me we were supposed to destroy the cup," he said instead. "I very nearly botched the whole thing."

Snape blinked at him. "You were meant to-not to botch it, and not you specifically, but you were meant to all be in that room when one of you touched the cup. It would have brought you to Voldemort's base of operations in time for the skirmish there. It was all in your orders."

"Was it?" Draco tried to remember. "I thought that it just said we were supposed to retrieve the cup. I don't think it said not to post sentries. How did Potter know to destroy the cup?"

For the first time, Snape looked uncomfortable. "He wasn't supposed to destroy it, and I was hoping you could tell us why he did. We had planned for the four of you to arrive outside Riddle House with the cup just before we went in. Albus was going to destroy it, and than Potter was going to kill Voldemort."

"That was your plan?" Draco asked. "Maybe Potter comes by it honestly, then. So what happened when we didn't come?"

"As it happened, that was for the best." Snape's voice was grim. "We were ambushed by Voldemort and two dozen of his best at our gathering place. Things were going rather badly for us when Voldemort suddenly staggered and fell. Albus hit him with the Killing Curse almost completely by accident, and it proved to be fatal-for both of them: Albus's heart gave out."

"I'm sorry," Draco said, although he wasn't. He could manage sorrow for Ginny Weasley, regret for Dean Thomas, even; he felt nothing at all for Dumbledore.

"I don't know why he broke the cup. But it saved us."

"I'm going to bed," Draco told him. The last thing he wanted was to hear Snape canonize Potter. But there was something that, unbelievably, he'd almost forgotten. "Does this mean that--."

"It's over, Draco. Really over. Go to bed."

Draco went. Alone. He had not slept in his own bed for weeks, and now that he was it did not seem nearly as luxurious as he'd expected. It took him a long time to fall asleep, and when he finally did, his dreams were bad enough to wake him: so bad he wished he hadn't.

The sun came up outside his windows, warm and golden, and he got up because it was better than staying where he was.  
It was only as he was dressing that he realized he was late not only for breakfast with Potter but also for guard duty, and that his uniform tunic looked slept in despite his best efforts. He wondered what the protocol was, for armies whose war had been won and rapists one no longer had to fuck. He gave it up, flattened his hair down with water, and walked through empty corridors and down endless stairs. He was not sure what the penalty was for being two hours late for a shift, but at least it would not be an interview with Dumbledore. He did not fancy being taken to task like an errant schoolboy.

He had always found the monotony of sentry duty strangely appealing; it required very little of him either intellectually or physically. He had learned to sleep standing up and with his eyes half-open, and wake at the slightest sound. But he had never slept the way Potter was sleeping, on the floor before the doorway with his head bent and his eyes wide, and a trickle of blood dried at the corner of his mouth.

Draco knew what it meant; he was a soldier. He knew what it might mean if he were found so, standing over the body of a man no one would doubt he had reason to kill. What he did not know was what to do. He knelt beside Potter, careful not to touch anything he did not have to, and rolled Potter from his stomach to his side. Potter's eyelashes fluttered and his body convulsed. Startled, Draco leapt back. Potter's arms and legs flopped once, and settled. He blinked normally, and Draco thought he swallowed.

It was only then that Draco realized he might live, and that he dared not be the one who decided otherwise. He shouted for help, and his voice sounded frantic to his own ears, and utterly natural. Why wouldn't he be frantic? Headquarters was deserted in the mornings; there were rarely more than two officers on duty. And this morning, there would be fewer than ever: only the survivors. For a long time no one came.

It surprised Draco a little that when help did come it came in the form of Snape. Snape, black-robed and silent, and quick to ascertain what was wrong. He pushed Draco away without a word, and pressed his fingers to the pulse point at Potter's neck. His lips moved; Draco thought that he was praying, although it seemed unlikely. Potter convulsed again, and this time there was gray foam on his lips, and bright red blood. And then he was dead.

Snape wiped his hands on the edge of Potter's robes and sat back on his heels. "Charlie Weasley is Dumbledore's office. Go and get him, Draco, quickly."

Draco scrambled to his feet. He could not believe it was Potter lying there with blood coming out of his mouth. It seemed too easy, unfairly so. "Close his eyes, at least," he said, and he was aware that Snape would not understand, and also that it was an acknowledgement of sorts.

Weasley came at once, as though he had some understanding already of what had caused Draco's urgency. When he saw Potter's body he seemed neither upset nor relieved. He said to Snape, "It seems to have been our day for making prophecies come true," and then to Draco, "It's okay. We can take it from here. This was not entirely-unexpected-given the amount of magic Potter expended last night. And perhaps this is how he would have wanted it."

"Perhaps," Draco echoed, the word coming out more sarcastic than he'd meant it to. He was tired of being treated like a child. There were no doors available to slam, and he was doing his best to maintain his dignity anyway.

He spent the rest of the day sulking, which meant a number of cigarettes on the shady porch and a concerted attempt at ignoring the funerary arrangements. He did not see Snape again until it was growing dark. "Come upstairs with me," Snape commanded, his hand hard on Draco's arm. It was not quite painful, but Draco knew that it would be if he chose to disobey. He went with Snape willingly, but when Snape closed the door firmly behind them and pushed him down on the bed, his breathing quickened. He was not panicking, but it would not take much.

Snape seemed to realize what was wrong. He let go of Draco immediately and stepped back. "It's alright," he said softly. "I only want to talk to you."

"I know," Draco answered, feeling his heart slow. "I just wasn't expecting it, is all."

"I killed Potter," Snape told him.

"I know," Draco said. "You weren't expecting me to protest, were you?"

Snape laughed. "You're the only one of us left with a conscience. If anyone were going to protest it would be you."

"My only protest is that I wanted to kill him myself," Draco corrected him, and he thought it looked like Snape relaxed a little, finally. That was what Draco wanted, was for Snape to relax. Draco was nervous enough for both of them. "When you kissed me the other night," he said, and watched as Snape came to attention, "I liked it."

Snape crossed the room and stood before him. Draco swallowed hard but kept himself from flinching. But it seemed that Snape only wanted to talk. "Are you sure of what you are asking me? And are you sure that you want it now? The war is over. You have your whole life ahead of you."

"It could have been me that died last night," Draco said, "and I don't want to die afraid of my own shadow. When you kissed me-I wanted you. You can make me like it, can't you, without potions or pills or spells?"

Snape did not quite smirk. "I can make you like it," he agreed. "I can't guarantee you won't regret it in the morning."

It was Draco's turn to smirk. "When has that ever stopped me?"

"Point taken," Snape said. And then his mouth was on Draco's, hard and fierce as Potter's had ever been, but with one small difference: Draco knew that if he asked, if he made any protest at all, Snape would stop. And so he did not need to ask.  
He had done this voluntarily before, though not so much of it as he'd led Snape to believe. He knew there could be pleasure in it, but he had never imagined just how pleasant it could be. Whether it was Snape's experience or Legilimency that made him aware of Draco's reactions even before Draco was aware of them, there was none of the fumbling, none of the awkwardness Draco had associated with sex.

He found that he had no trouble gaining-or sustaining--an erection, even as Snape pushed him back onto the bed and ground their hips together. He lost track of the precise sequence of events shortly after, but he knew that somehow Snape got them both undressed and between the sheets. He remembered that somehow Snape ended up beneath him, writhing as Draco bit his shoulder and ran covetous fingers over his cock. He remembered pushing himself down onto Snape, and that it was neither painful nor terrible, and that after a while it was enough to make him come.

It turned out that Draco like sex very much. He even thought that he might like to do it often, and with Snape, but Snape was quick to attempt to disabuse him of that idea. In fact, his choice of conversation afterward left a great deal to be desired. They were lying against Snape's battered pillows, smoking Draco's cigarettes-somehow Snape seemed never to have his own-when he said, "There's something I have to tell you."

Draco knew that whatever was coming was almost certainly unpleasant. "Why?" he asked. "Will it change anything?"

Snape considered this. "It will probably mean that you'll never speak to me again," he admitted.

"But do I really need to know?" Draco was tired of secrets, but not so tired that he wanted to share Snape's simply to keep them from being secret.

Snape pushed himself up on one elbow and stubbed the cigarette out on the floorboard and extinguished the smoke with a spell. "I guess maybe you don't," he admitted, his back still to Draco. "Maybe I thought telling you would make me feel better."

"Then don't," Draco suggested. "I don't want to know anything I don't have to."

"You might have made a spy after all," Snape said, and rolled onto his stomach and went to sleep.

He slept like a man at peace with himself, and maybe he was; Draco lay beside him staring up at the canopy and trying not to hate him for it. He was so tired he ached, and lately when he fell asleep he dreamed of Harry Potter. Better exhaustion than dreaming of Potter dead with bloody vomit on his lips, the green eyes staring, the hands clenched. Better exhaustion than dreaming of Potter kneeling before him, struggling to get him hard. Better anything than dreaming of Potter begging him to give freely what Potter had once taken.

Snape never stirred, not even when Draco stood up and went to the window. Draco knew that if he said Snape's name, touched his shoulder, the older man would wake and would not grudge the sleep lost. Snape was always sympathetic; Draco sometimes thought he was overly so. It had been to Snape's advantage to have Draco a little broken, and they both knew it. They both knew that had it not been for Draco Snape would not have had Potter to fulfill his prophecy.

So it was self-interest as much as kindness that got Snape up in the middle of the night to mix Dreamless Sleep potions or light candles when Draco could not bear the dark. And Draco loved Snape for himself, and because Snape came as close to making him feel safe as anyone had done in a long time. He did not need to know Snape's latest secret to know that something would eventually come between them. But there was a government to be rebuilt, and power for the taking. He could try to ensure that better people took it-better people than Voldemort or Dumbledore, than Snape or his father. And it seemed he could enjoy himself doing it.


End file.
